Pasquale Fornara was leading the race until the legendary day in the Dolomites that ended at the top of Monte Bondone. The cold overpowered most of the peloton, leaving only 43 riders in the race. Charly Gaul left the rest of the survivors behind and took the lead at the top of the mountain.

This excerpt is from "The Story of the Giro d'Italia", Volume 1. If you enjoy it we hope you will consider purchasing the book, either print or electronic. The Amazon link here will make either purchase easy.

Charly Gaul was one of the most exciting, exasperating and enigmatic riders of the 1950s. He turned pro in 1953 at the age of 20. By 1955 the slight, fragile-looking Luxembourger had established himself as the sport’s finest climber. In the 1955 Tour he won two mountain stages, the mountains prize and third place in the Overall. He quickly developed the maddening style of inattentive and lazy racing during the flat stages where he would give up gobs of time, knowing that he could explode in the mountains and leave the others many minutes behind. Sometimes he would rip a race apart and sometimes, inexplicably, Gaul would just do nothing. Like most of the riders of the 1950s, Gaul used amphetamines. It has to be emphasized that there were no drug tests and the modern opprobrium regarding drug-taking was not then the norm. Coppi was quite frank about his drug taking, saying that he took drugs when necessary. When asked when that would be, he answered, “Practically all of the time.”

But Gaul admitted that he took drugs in larger amounts than the others and the results showed in his racing. The hyperthermia that amphetamine use can induce gave Gaul the ability to race in cold and wet conditions but caused him to suffer unbearably on hot days, sometimes even forcing him to jump into city fountains in the middle of a race. There are pictures of Gaul (and a lot of other riders of his era) glassy-eyed with flecks of dried foam around his lips, sad testimony that Gaul did what he believed he had to do in order to be who he had to be. I am sure a lot of his erratic behavior is explainable by his heavy drug use.

Now 23, a mature Gaul was capable of mixing it up with the world’s finest. He entered the Giro for the first time on a Faema-sponsored international squad that included Clerici, Fritz Schaer, Rolf Graf and his loyal gregario Marcel Ernzer. With the exception of Ernzer, good teammates mattered little to Gaul because he rode as a loner who, when the circumstances suited him, could fly up the mountains, twiddling his pedals at a high cadence, devastating the peloton. British rider Brian Robinson ended up on mixed nationality teams with Gaul and found Gaul didn’t even hold strategy meetings with his teammates. Gaul had little use for anyone else in the professional peloton and to no small degree, the feeling was mutual.

Coppi was entered, now riding for Carpano-Coppi. His personal problems and the public relations difficulties they brought along, as well as his declining performances, had made him less attractive to Bianchi. We must remember, declining performance measured on the Coppi scale is different than it is for mere mortals.

Here’s a quick review of Coppi’s 1955. It had been a good, but not great year for a man carrying the name campionissimo, with his winning the Italian Road Championship, the Tours of the Apennines, the Campania and Tre Valle Varesine, and taking second in the Giro d’Italia and Paris–Roubaix. But when he came down with typhus in early 1956 Bianchi fired him with the excuse that he couldn’t race during the early season. Magni had opened the door for extra-sportif sponsors and Coppi was able to walk right in and ride Coppi bikes (produced by the Fiorelli brothers in Novi Ligure until the 1990s) for the Carpano aperitif company.

Defilippis was the leader of the Bianchi team, and even though several of Coppi’s hand-picked squad had moved elsewhere, Bianchi still had Ettore Milano, Andrea Carrea and Giuseppe Favero ready to ride the Giro in Bianchi’s bianco-celeste (white and sky-blue) jerseys.

Two of the greatest riders Spain ever produced, Miguel Poblet and Federico Bahamontes, entered the Giro for the first time. In 1955 Poblet had become the first Spaniard to wear the Tour’s Yellow Jersey and later to win a major classic, the 1957 Milan–San Remo. Bahamontes rode his first Tour in 1954, winning the mountains competition.

Magni, Fornara and Astrua were back to ride a Giro that, at 3,526 kilometers, was nearly 350 kilometers shorter than the 1955 edition. The race went no further south than Salerno, near Naples.

When journeyman Atala rider Alessandro Fantini won stage two into Genoa (there was a team time trial that same afternoon won by Leo-Chlorodont) and the hilly fourth stage finishing in Salice Terme, he became the General Classification leader with Giuseppe Fallarini second at 1 minute 23 seconds and Astrua 15 seconds further back.

Getting a cooling spray

Fantini proved a worthy owner of the maglia rosa, keeping it through the thirteen-kilometer San Marino individual time trial (run as a relay race), Charly Gaul’s assault in the mountains of the Molise region in stage nine, until the 45-kilometer time trial in Lucca in stage thirteen.

Meanwhile, Coppi’s bad luck held. He fell during the stage six run-in to Rimini, injuring his back. Coppi’s 1956 Giro was over.

Coppi wasn’t the only rider suffering from bad luck. Magni explains, “During stage twelve [sometimes called stage ten because different accounts handle the two days of half-stages differently], from Grosseto to Livorno, I crashed on the descent out of Volterra and broke my left collarbone. At the hospital they said I should put on a plaster cast and quit. But I didn't want to. Since the next day was a rest day, I told the doctor to do nothing and that we should wait and see. The day after, I asked the doctor to put on an elastic bandage instead of a cast because I wanted to try to ride the following stage, Livorno to Lucca. It worked! I wasn't among the first riders but I finished.”

In fact, the next stage Magni referred to was a 45-kilometer individual time trial to Lucca. Fornara won the time trial, giving him the lead with Fantini 43 seconds behind.

After stage fifteen’s hill climb it was clear that Gaul had plenty of form but was riding lazily. Gaul beat Bahamontes by three seconds in the three kilometers to the Basilica di San Luca, near Bologna. Poblet, who was known as a superb sprinter, showed that he could climb as well, being only seven seconds slower than Gaul. Fornara kept his lead; both he and Defilippis came in nineteen seconds behind Gaul.

Magni, however, was still having trouble with his broken collarbone. “Just before the stage started I tried to ride my bike on a climb and I noticed I couldn't use the muscles of my left arm to pull on the handlebar very hard. So my mechanic, Faliero Masi, the best mechanic of all time, cut a piece of inner tube and suggested I pull it with my mouth. That was a great idea!”

Fiorenzo Magni riding with a broken collarbone.

Meanwhile misfortune stuck to Magni like velcro. Stage sixteen to Rapallo took the Giro over the Apennines where Magni crashed again, this time breaking his humerus. “I didn’t have enough strength in my left arm,” he said, “and I crashed after hitting a ditch by the road. I fell on my already broken bone and fainted from the pain. The ambulance came to bring me to the hospital. In the ambulance they gave me water and I got back on my feet. When I realized that I was being taken to the hospital I screamed and told the driver to stop. I didn't want to abandon the Giro.

“I mounted my bike again and restarted pedaling. The peloton had waited for me, so I arrived in Rapallo in a relatively good position. I had no idea of how serious my condition was, I just knew that I was in a lot of pain but I didn't want to have X-rays that evening. During the days that followed I could hold my own.”The race arrived at the Dolomites for stage nineteen, a trip from Sondrio over the Stelvio (the not-so-famous south face) to Merano. The day’s riding didn’t change a lot. Torpado rider Cleto Maule won the stage with the bashed and battered Magni somehow second. Now it was Gaul’s turn to suffer at the hands of Lady Luck, having been harassed by three punctures on a day that should have been his. Instead, he finished in the second chasing group, six minutes behind Maule.

This brought the race to the stage twenty tappone with the Costalunga, Rolle and Brocon ascents with the finish atop the 1,650-meter-high Monte Bondone.
So far, Gaul had done his usual job of losing time and sat 16 minutes 5 seconds behind Fornara. Yet, Gaul remained ambitious and told his gregario Marcel Ernzer that he would win the next day’s stage or give up trying.

The forecast called for rough weather and race director Torriani was asked to consider cancelling the stage. Torriani felt that the race so far had been rather unexciting, and a difficult day in the Dolomites had the possibility of giving his race an electrifying conclusion. He had no idea…

The day began cold and rainy with the riders underdressed and pitifully unprepared for the conditions that faced them. Again Torriani was asked to at least stop the stage at Trent, but Torriani felt that a legendary stage was in the making.

When the stage’s climbing began, race leader Fornara went to the front and kept up a tempo that seemed to keep things together, although Gaul was first over the Costalunga. On the Rolle, Gaul was again first over the top but suffered two flats and momentarily fell behind.

Over the Brocon Gaul took off with Atala’s Bruno Monti and left the other master climber in the race, Federico Bahamontes, 2 minutes 35 seconds behind. The temperature began to drop, really drop. Then snow started to fall. On the descent of the Brocon the riders’ brakes wouldn’t work on their frozen rims. Gaul was forced to use his shoes to slow his bike. Now the cold became too much for many of the riders. Fornara abandoned his Pink Jersey for the warmth of a farmhouse.

Nino Defilippis had done his best to continue, trying to make a grab for the leadership and now he too quit, saying that he wouldn’t restart for ten million lire. Some racers hitched rides in cars to the finish.

And still pedaling through the frozen snow, Charly Gaul kept up an infernal pace to the top of Monte Bondone while over 60 riders abandoned. Although Gaul had survived the day in better shape than almost all of the other riders, he had to be lifted off his bike and his frozen (short sleeve!) jersey cut off him. Still, one can’t help but feel that Gaul was probably charged up with a large dose of amphetamines and they gave him the ability to ride through the frozen horror of the Bondone ascent. He was taken indoors where it was 10 minutes before he opened his eyes. His response after being told once again that he was the maglia rosa? He started swearing and rued the day he had first mounted a bike.
In those few final kilometers Charly Gaul had gone from the middle of the standings to being the new Pink Jersey.

Charly Gaul on the Bondone

Fiorenzo Magni, riding with both a broken collarbone and humerus, finished third that fateful day in the Dolomites, 12 minutes 15 seconds behind Gaul. But it was enough to elevate him to second place overall.

About that day in frozen Hell, Magni said, “It snowed the whole day and it was very cold; I had not noticed how much. Along the way I saw many bikes parked next to bars and I asked what was going on. They told me that most of the peloton froze and had to quit. Then, before reaching Trent I saw the Pink Jersey quitting too! ‘What?? Am I seeing things?’ I wondered. If I were the Pink Jersey I would have continued, even if I had to walk, but I would never abandon!
“When we were in Trent my team car came up to me and said I was third. ‘Third!?!,’ I wondered again. I was third that day and became second in the GC.
“Actually, I thought about attacking Charly Gaul in the following stages and trying to win my fourth Giro. I tried attacking him a couple of times during the last two stages, but he was too strong.”

You can’t help admiring a man who just won’t quit. Even with the intense pain of two broken bones, through rain and snow Magni was still trying to win the Giro after nearly everyone else had either given up or just plain gone home.
Gaul had won his first Grand Tour in spectacular style.